Advancements in food portioning machines have made them more productive so that they can now portion larger quantities of mixed dough or semi viscous material per given unit of time. This brings up a new need for a machine to feed dough to these portioning machines at these larger quantities in an accurate fashion. The field of the instant invention is primarily medium to large scale dough and semi viscous material feeding machines.
In facilities with a mixer and portioning machine but no filling or feeding device the dough or semi viscous material is brought over to the portioning machine where a person takes the dough or semi viscous material by hand out of the mixer bowl or tote and lifts it up and places the dough or semi viscous material in the receiving hopper of the portioner. In the prior art small to medium scale hoists or tote dump systems exist where dough is taken from the mixer in a container, such as a mixing bowl or a tote, which is then lifted and dumped into the portioning machines. This dump or bulk discharge has several short comings, which include but are not limited to, creating a condition where the size of the mixed batch of dough may exceed the capacity of the hopper of the portioning machine or where attempts to partially transfer a portion of the dough in the tote or mixing bowl to the portioner hopper may overfill and spill, making for waste and extra time and labor to clean up spills. Another issue is that the dumping of a full tote or large quantity of dough or semi viscous material all at once into the hopper of the portioning machine may alter the scaling of portions due to the higher head pressure of the dough or semi viscous material being presented to the portioning machine. That causes variations in portion size, weight, and volume of the portions due to the sudden change in the volume of dough in the hopper and resulting increase in the head pressure in the portioning machine hopper.
Inversely, when the dough level starts to drop from the point at which the hopper is significantly full, then the portion size may start to decrease as a result from reduced hopper head pressures. This requires an operator or an automated system to always adjust the portioning machine to compensate for the changing hopper level and associated changing portion sizes. Best practices in the industry dictate that one should feed the dough or semi viscous material at a more constant rate so as to maintain a constant hopper level. When the dough is fed in a more constant rate, which does not occur with these existing bowls or tote lifts or dumpers, the portioning machine will deliver portions of most constant portion size and/or weight.
There also exists in the prior art vessels, such as totes or troughs, with dump gates that are on the bottoms of the vessels or totes and that open completely, partially or can be maintained closed. To provide for a means of a steady delivery rate of mixed dough or semi viscous material a person would need to monitor and adjust the opening of such lower slide gates. The flow out of these totes would vary when the materials in the tote or hopper reduces, or empties, resulting in the rate of its evacuation also decreasing. As an example a full tote will have a faster flow of materials from it because of the higher head pressure due to it being full, therefore one would need to reduce the opening of the dump gate in the bottom of the tote. As dough is taken out of the tote the head pressure and therefore flow out of the tote will decrease requiring an operator to open up the area of the dump gate.
Additionally, as a simplified example of a source of variation and loss of production in these current systems consider the steps required to change a tote when the flow of dough or materials becomes less than the portioning machine requires or consumes, then the tote needs to be taken out and substituted for a new full tote. The changing from a spent tote to a “fresh” or full tote is also typically accompanied by a required stop in production so as to allow for removing the substantially spent tote, removing any or the majority of residual materials from the spent tote and placing them into the next/full/fresh tote, placing the next tote in the hoist, lifting, moving the next/full/fresh tote over the receiving hopper of the portioning machine, restarting the flow of dough or semi viscous material into the portioning machine receiving hopper, waiting for the hopper to refill and then starting the portioning machine back up, removing the first materials from the portioning machine discharge as they will have an inaccurate weight or size then checking and possibly needing to re-calibrate or adjust the portioning machine to provide portions of the desired weight or size. This time loss can reduce the overall production capacity by up to twenty percent, which amounts to a much higher manufacturing cost.
There have been devices made that can feed higher production portioning machines using methods such as auger pumps and “chunkers” but these can have operational issues such as smearing of the chocolate chips in the dough. There are also very large feeders that have a receiving chamber, a pair of counter rotating feed rollers that issue the dough or semi viscous material out in a sheet or slab to be conveyed up to the receiving hopper of the portioning machine. Such devices are available but they are expensive devices and can typically only be justified for use by large scale or high production large scale operations due to these costs. They also require a significant amount of floor space which makes them prohibitive for use in smaller production runs and facilities. These large devices being large and heavy also typically do not come apart for cleaning and so they need to be cleaned in place which is a more time consuming and labor intensive cleaning process.
Simply making a scaled down version of larger machines is not cost effective as it would require the same number of components and manufacturing operations, therefore there would only be cost savings due to reduction of overall materials and manufacturing times. Producing copied smaller scale versions of devices from large production line machines would have costs of eighty to ninety percent of the large scale machines for a required throughput capacity of ¼ to ½ of the large scale machines. This twenty percent reduction in cost would make the scaled down units unacceptable from a cost and floor space perspective.
Therefore a need exists for a device that can feed dough or semi viscous materials efficiently and consistently as well as have a smaller size or require minimal floor space and which is less costly then the large scale machines. The need would also be for a new simpler design that would provide for the required feeding needs for more consistent portioning and throughput but in a simpler and more cost effective manner. The new device can also allow for it to be more easily cleaned by allowing access to all areas that need to be cleaned and where no open access is available, provision is made for simple disassembly so that one can gain cleaning access thru removal of access panels and or partial access where some components could be moved to allow for cleaning access.